


Evidence

by acquiredsight



Category: Kraken - China Mieville
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Fix-It, Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-22
Updated: 2014-12-22
Packaged: 2018-03-02 21:20:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,807
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2826473
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/acquiredsight/pseuds/acquiredsight
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which the world takes pity on its hero.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Evidence

**Author's Note:**

  * For [betweenthebliss](https://archiveofourown.org/users/betweenthebliss/gifts).



> For my lovely Yuletide recipient, I hope you enjoy! 
> 
> Warnings: If you got through the book, then there's probably nothing here to freak you out. Still, spoilers can be found in the end notes.

For London at large, the almost-apocalypse had amounted to nothing more than several days of people feeling vaguely ill-at-ease, followed all at once by a return to the previous way of things. Even for the city's magical underbelly, chaos of preceding days had changed little. A power vacuum had opened in the wake of the Tattoo's sudden departure, and with his troops in disarray, Saira, well and truly ex-communicated from the Londonmancers, reluctantly stepped up to fill it. For Billy Harrow this was a great relief. Though his introduction to magical London had been haphazard and incomplete at best, it was clear to him that there would be no leaving it behind. Like Marge, he was now too entrenched, and really too fascinated, to want out. Having friends in high places, he felt, could only help him in his quest to learn anything and everything about the world he had been thrust into.

Billy was, after all, a scientist. It seemed only right to thoroughly investigate his knack. With this in mind, he returned to his job at the Natural History Museum, which inspired a bittersweet nostalgia that had its roots in the original (now deceased) Billy Harrow. Billy had hardly known Dane at all, back in the beginning, but walking the halls of the museum, he felt as if Dane’s ghost lurked around every corner.

He went back to giving tours. Billy kind of liked it, really, and it also afforded him the chance to walk around the museum, listening intently for the sound of clinking glass. The mnemophylax had seemingly died or dissipated after the threat to the world had been conquered, though of course Billy could not remember precisely what the threat had been.

Four days after the near end of the world, Billy received a call from officer Collingswood. She left a message on his home phone, which he listened to that night.

"Hullo, Billy. This is Collingswood, with the police. The FSRC is in a bit of a spot. You see, we have some bodies. Died in the fighting. And about a dozen of them...well, they've got squid parts, don't they? One of them looks like it might be our friend Dane Parnell, but it’s a bit difficult to tell, innit? You should come to the station and give a statement.” She hesitated. “If you’d be willing to identify some of the bodies…but we’ll understand if you aren’t.”  And then she left her number.

Billy, whose heart had lurched unpleasantly at the thought of seeing Dane, did not return her call.

-

But it nagged at him, the back of his mind, wondering, running in circles, thinking _maybe._ His next day off work, he gave in.

Billy walked up to the front desk of the station and said, haltingly, “I’m here for, uh, the – officer Collingswood called me?”

“Go on up,” the bored receptionist said, “second story, double doors to the left. Can’t miss it.”

Billy nodded, though the receptionist was not looking, and went.  In the office of the FSRC, which they shared with some other detectives, Billy looked around until he spotted Collingswood. It would, he felt, be hard to miss her. Now that he was paying attention, it seemed obvious that there was something _different_ about her, that she didn’t _really_ belong here in this depressingly normal building.

As he approached her, she turned and looked a bit surprised. “Billy bloody Harrow. Didn’t expect to see you so soon. What do you want?”

“You called me. Something about giving a statement and,” Billy swallowed, “identifying bodies.”

“You volunteering, then? Good.” Collingswood began to walk away, talking as she went, so Billy followed her. “Now, me and Baron had a bet going over whether you’d come. I bet yes, but I didn’t really believe it, so I suppose I’ll thank you for that.”

“Then why did you bet that I would?”

“Honestly, mate, I’m pissed about the way Baron handled this whole deal, and I didn’t want to agree with him. Plus, I like you.” Collingswood gave him a smirk and continued, “I’ve put in for a transfer, you know. I’m trying to start up an FSRC unit in Liverpool, or maybe Glasgow. Bound to be some weird shit going on there.”

“Good luck,” he said.

“Thanks, but I don’t need luck. What I _need_ ,” she said loudly, intending to be overheard, “is for the bureaucracy to get their _heads_ out of their—,”

“Fuck off, Kath!” someone shouted from a nearby office. Collingswood subsided with a grumble.

-

In the coroner’s office, Billy stood aside as Collingswood opened drawers, trying to find Dane.

“What did him in?” she asked.

Billy opened his mouth to speak and choked. He cleared his throat and tried again. “Grisamentum. Byrne sprayed him in the air and Dane inhaled.”

“Nasty way to go,” Collingswood said. She eyed Billy with sympathy, and tried another drawer. “Got him!” she crowed. And suddenly Billy was looking at the dead body of a man who had saved his life repeatedly, who didn’t get the ending he deserved. Dane had wanted to be a hero.

“So…” Collingswood trailed off awkwardly.

“It’s him.”

“I thought so, but something about him seemed _off_. What happened to you all, that day?”

“I don’t remember the whole thing. I don’t think anyone does, do they?” Billy asked. Collingswood shook her head and motioned for him to continue. “But the Krakenists wanted to stop Grisamentum from doing whatever it was he was trying, and I did too. I’m not sure what they did. Can’t recall, though I feel like I was there.” He ran his hand through his hair and sighed. “They got the Kraken’s blessing, I suppose. They got its power. That much you must have put together.”

“The tentacles and all were a bit hard to miss, yeah.”

Billy gave a bare hint of a smile and said, “I’d imagine. So we all went, all the Krakenists and some of the Londonmancers, and fought. We lost. Dane died. And then I just knew we should go to the sea’s embassy. I’m not sure why, now, but I knew it would help us. That’s where you found me. You know the rest as well as I do.”

Collingswood snorted. “So not very bloody well, then.” She paused for a moment and said, “If you’d like, I can give you a couple minutes alone. With him.”

“Yes,” Billy said. “I think that would be good.”

Collingswood turned to go, then reconsidered and faced him. She met his eyes. “It would be a terrible shame if his body disappeared, you know, Billy. But the coroner doesn’t know the names of all his interns. The security here is more lax than you’d think. Anyone in a uniform could walk in, make off with him.”

Billy studied her intently. “Collingswood—,”

“Call me Kath, eh?”

“Kath, then. Are you saying what I think?”

She made a show of looking perplexed. “I don’t know _what_ you think I’m saying, Billy. All I’m doing is remarking on the state of affairs around here. But between you and me,” Collingswood winked, “one less dead body is one less report.” And she left, letting the door shut firmly behind her.

-

When Collingswood came in to the office the next day (late, always late, but who gave a fuck?) she was unsurprised to see Baron waiting for her.

He cut to the chase. “Kath. The body of Dane Parnell is gone from the coroner’s office. You wouldn’t happen to know where it is, would you?”

“Good morning, Baron. I’m very well, thanks for asking.”

“Kath!” Baron snapped.

“I dunno, boss.”

Baron scrutinized her, but her expression gave nothing away. After a tense few moments, Baron shook his head and resigned himself to putting up with her insubordination for a bit longer. _God, please let her transfer,_ he prayed.

-

Billy took the body back to the museum, of course. He was hoping that, whatever knack for preservation had been given to him by the angel of memory, it would work on Dane. Having gone home and thought about what Collingswood said, it had occurred to him to wonder why she would think he’d want Dane’s body. And then, thinking about this, he had said to himself: _I wonder if Dane could be brought back._ He realized he didn’t know. There were a lot of things Billy didn’t know about the world he was living in, these days. But he saw the opportunity and said, _why not?_ If nothing else, he would ensure that Dane got a proper burial. Dane had no other family to do so.

Billy had keys and access codes to the labs at the museum. He brought Dane in covertly. Before setting in to work, he stopped a moment. Billy had never been a devout person, but Dane was. And it could never hurt to ask for help. So Billy prayed, aloud, to the Kraken that Dane so loved, and to the angel of memory who had given Billy this odd gift in the first place.

Massaging chemicals into Dane’s flesh with a clinical touch, Billy realized that Dane looked larger than he had before whatever he had done to gain the kraken’s power (and Billy picked at this absence of memory like a scab, constantly trying to recall). Perhaps it was an illusion, but Billy thought about how Dane had moved, afterward. Like a predator. How he had sat in the car on the way to fight Grisamentum, so still, biding his time. _The movement that looks like not moving._

Remembering the transformation the Krakenists had undergone occupied his mind for some time. When Billy forced himself back to the present, he found that hours had passed with him doing the work of embalming as if in a trance. He had removed the bullet Dane had taken shortly before his death and sewn up the wound. He had also sewn odd wounds on Dane’s left hand, a puncture on each side. Dane was, for now, preserved.

Billy wheeled Dane’s body to the lab’s large commercial refrigerator and tucked him into a back corner, behind some shelves. Knacking, Billy recalled, was all about convincing reality of what you wanted to be true. So he said, “There’s not a human body in this corner. Why would there be? There are racks of specimens, just like always. Besides, Dane belongs here.” Billy hoped that was enough that no one would notice, at least for a while. He needed to make some calls.

-

“Calls” was a general term for the more uncertain process of contacting people who might want to forget the whole thing. Billy went to Wati first, of course, where he slept in the statues near the railroad tracks. After all, Wati had traveled through the afterlife to emerge as a spirit, flitting from body to body. Maybe Dane could do the same.

Wati laughed at him. “Oh, Billy. I was a _thing._ I was never really dead in the first place. And besides, do you _really_ think Dane’s in the same afterlife as the one I came from? He was a Teuthie. He’s probably in some otherworldly abyssal trench. No, if you’re trying to bring him back, you’d best try elsewhere.” Billy opened his mouth to reply, but Wati spoke again. “Mind you this: I’m not saying it’s impossible. If anyone could do it, Billy Harrow, it would be you. But think about it. Even if you do bring him back, by whatever means…he won’t be the same man as when he died. He’ll be _different_ , Billy. You might not recognize him.”

“I don’t care,” Billy said. “I have to try. It wasn’t fair, what happened to him. It wasn’t right.”

Wati chuckled bitterly and said, “No, it wasn’t. But things around here rarely are.”

-

Billy tried every other source he could think of. He spent all his spare time for a week chasing down leads. He even asked Marge, who hugged him and pointed him to some obscure message boards. Nobody knew anything. No one had done it, or if they had, they’d kept quiet.

The museum had become a place of comfort, now. Distressed, he wandered about, muttering in the unused back passages about his search for a solution. “If only I could find the right person to ask. Everyone wants to resurrect a loved one. _Someone_ must have gotten it bloody right.” And then, in the middle of his ramblings, he was interrupted by the sound of clinking glass.

Billy startled and, heart in his throat, began to turn about, trying to determine where it was coming from. Maybe the hallway to the right? Yes. _Yes._ He ran down the hall and dashed through an open doorway, skidding to a halt in a little-used storeroom. Though he searched, he could not find the mnemophylax.

But at least it was alive.

-

After that, he began praying in earnest, hoping that the power of his belief would be enough to help it regain its strength. Whenever Billy heard glass rolling or bumping against metal, he chased the sound, which led to a couple instances of tour groups being abandoned, and in one memorable case, Billy opening a supply closet door onto two coworkers fooling about.

And one extremely ordinary Tuesday, around three weeks after Billy’s original bodysnatching, he heard glass and followed. He didn’t expect to catch the angel (he’d never been able to before), so he walked instead of running. But as he followed the sound through the corridors, he realized that it was leading him inexorably to the room where he had embalmed Dane.

Billy steeled himself and opened the door. Within, a knee-high specimen jar topped with the skull of a dog clinked.

“Oh,” Billy whispered, “hello. You’re looking well.”

It grinned at him with its doggy head and bumped against the door of the walk-in refrigerator. Billy fumbled to open it. The angel rolled inside. Billy did not follow it until it rolled back towards him, then to Dane, then to Billy again. He took this as permission and closed the refrigerator door behind him, shivering.

Jar lid rattling, the angel led Billy over to Dane. And then, as quickly as it had come, it fell apart, skeletal arms clattering to the floor. Billy stared for a few seconds. Then he looked over. The sheet covering Dane’s body rose…and fell.

Dane was breathing.

“Bloody hell,” Billy said.

“You’re telling me,” Dane croaked in reply.

-

Billy managed to sneak Dane out of the building and into his car. Then he returned inside long enough to inform his supervisor he was going home sick. When he made it back out to his car, Dane was going through his glove compartment.

“I’m starving,” he said to Billy, who laughed.

“This still doesn’t seem real,” Billy said, and put the car in gear. “What do you remember?”

“Well, I remember dying. Then…darkness. Maybe nothing. Then waking up in a refrigerator. Thanks for that, by the way.”

“Oh, anytime,” Billy said, and let out a hysterical giggle.

“Do you think I can have my job back?” Dane wondered aloud.

“I don’t know. I can’t see why not. The police filed you as a missing person. Since, you know, they didn’t have a body.”

“I mean, I never called in to work.”

“Why don’t we say you were kidnapped?”

“It’s not even a total lie.” They grinned at one another.

“But why do you want it back?” Billy asked.

Dane look surprised, and then a little embarrassed. “Billy, the angel brought me back for a reason. It’s in here,” he tapped his temple, “telling me so.”

Billy jerked the wheel in surprise, then corrected. A car in the next lane honked. “The angel of memory is in your head?”

“Not exactly,” Dane said. “But it gave me a purpose.”

“To help it protect the museum?”

“No, Billy. To help it protect _you_.”

Billy parked the car and sat in silence. He studied Dane. Dane’s eyes, which used to be blue, had been swallowed up by the black of his pupils. The kraken’s legacy. “Will you be going back to the church? Trying to recruit members, build up the congregation again?”

“I don’t think so. The Teuthex is dead, and there’s no one to take his place. Our library is gone.”

“You could be the Teuthex.”

Dane shook his head. “I don’t think you understand, Billy. The angel of memory gave me a duty and I intend to fulfill it. I _want_ to.”

“So you won’t be leaving, or dying again?” Billy clarified.

“Not if I can help it,” said Dane, and reached across the console for Billy’s hand.

Billy gripped Dane’s cool fingers and smiled. “Well, then. You’d best come up and see my flat.”

“Yes,” Dane agreed. “I’d better.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you very much for reading!
> 
> Spoilers: this fic includes discussion of dead bodies and non-detailed descriptions of embalming.


End file.
